Seekers after God eBook

“Count him not as an enemy, but admonish him
as a brother.” (2. Thess. iv. 15.)

“Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another,
if any man have a quarrel against any.” (Col.
iii. 13.)

Nay, are they not even in full accordance with the
mind and spirit of Him who said,—­

“If thy brother trespass against thee, go
and tell him his fault between thee and him alone:
if he shall hear thee thou hast gained thy brother.”

In the life of Marcus Aurelius, as in so many lives,
we are able to trace the great law of compensation.
His exalted station, during the later years of his
life, threw him among many who were false and Pharisaical
and base; but his youth had been spent under happier
conditions, and this saved him from falling into the
sadness of those whom neither man nor woman please.
In his earlier years it had been his lot to see the
fairer side of humanity, and the recollection of those
pure and happy days was like a healing tree thrown
into the bitter and turbid waters of his reign.

CHAPTER III.

THE LIFE AND THOUGHTS OF MARCUS AURELIUS (continued).

Marcus was now the undisputed lord of the Roman world.
He was seated on the dizziest and most splendid eminence
which it was possible for human grandeur to obtain.

But this imperial elevation kindled no glow of pride
or self-satisfaction in his meek and chastened nature.
He regarded himself as being in fact the servant of
all. It was his duty, like that of the bull in
the herd, or the ram among the flocks, to confront
every peril in his own person, to be foremost in all
the hardships of war and the most deeply immersed
in all the toils of peace. The registry of the
citizens, the suppression of litigation, the elevation
of public morals, the restraining of consanguineous
marriages, the care of minors, the retrenchment of
public expenses, the limitation of gladitorial games
and shows, the care of roads, the restoration of senatorial
privileges, the appointment of none but worthy magistrates—­even
the regulation of street traffic—­these
and numberless other duties so completely absorbed
his attention that, in spite of indifferent health,
they often kept him at severe labour from early morning
till long after midnight. His position indeed
often necessitated his presence at games and shows,
but on these occasions he occupied himself either
in reading, or being read to, or in writing notes.
He was one of those who held that nothing should be
done hastily, and that few crimes were worse than the
waste of time. It is to such views and such habits
that we owe the compositions of his works. His
Meditations were written amid the painful self-denial
and distracting anxieties of his wars with the Quadi
and the Marcomanni, and he was the author of other
works which unhappily have perished. Perhaps
of all the lost treasures of antiquity there are few
which we should feel a greater wish to recover than
the lost autobiography of this wisest of Emperors
and holiest of Pagan men.